Government Wants Increased SMS rates for Reduced Taxes

Government of Pakistan, finance ministry to be exact, has communicated Telecom companies this Monday to increase SMS rates in order to get reduced taxes, told us high-ups at telecom companies – plus it was also reported by ‘The News’ yesterday.

However, telecom companies are firm that they will not increase SMS rates, as text messages share significant revenues in their balance sheets. However, we know that Mobilink can favor such a decision, as it is not offering any SMS bundle. It may be recalled that once they had introduced this SMS bundle, but then took it back, reportedly due to network congestion.

A senior telecom official, while speaking with us, was of the view that there is this one telecom company that is feeding government for such offerings. He said that increasing SMS rates is not going to impact GST share for government in any case, as government gets taxes for revenues – and revenue coming out of SMS messages is due to its low cost. Moreover, he said that if voice call is now at 63 paisa, how come a text message can be of 1 rupee.

Whatever the situation is, we will have to wait for another day to see what actually is there in the mind of finance minister. However, it is a fact that reduction in taxes for telecom services is due by all means. But one can expect anything from the government – but let’s hope for the best